“Something’s about to go wrong,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Paul said, but Arlen didn’t respond, staring instead at the men disembarking and realizing something-the moment they stepped off the train, their skin slid back across their bones, knitting together as if healed by the wave of some magic wand. The swirls of smoke in their eye sockets vanished into the hazy night air. It was the train. Yes, whatever was going to happen was going to happen to that train.
“Something’s about to go wrong,” he repeated. “With our train. Something’s going to go bad wrong.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do, damn it!”
Paul looked to the flask, and his eyes said what his words did not.
“I’m not drunk. Haven’t had more than a few swallows.”
“What do you mean, something’s going to go wrong?” Paul asked again.
Arlen held on to the truth, felt the words heavy in his throat but couldn’t let them go. It was one thing to see such horrors; it was worse to try and speak of them. Not just because it was a difficult thing to describe but because no one ever believed. And the moment you gave voice to such a thing was the moment you charted a course for your character that you could never alter. Arlen understood this well, had known it since boyhood.
But Paul Brickhill had sat before him with smoke the color of an early-morning storm cloud hanging in his eyes, and Arlen was certain what that meant. He couldn’t let him board that train again.
“People are going to die,” he said.
Paul Brickhill leaned his head back and stared.
“We get back on that train, people are going to die,” Arlen said. “I’m sure of it.”
He’d spent many a day trying to imagine this gift away. To fling it from him the way you might a poisonous spider caught crawling up your arm, and long after the chill lingered on your flesh you’d thank the sweet hand of Providence that you’d been given the opportunity to knock the beast away. Only he’d never been given the opportunity. No, the stark sight of death had stalked him, trailed him relentlessly. He knew it when he saw it, and he knew it was no trick of the light, no twist of bad liquor upon the mind. It was prophecy, the gift of foresight granted to a man who’d never wished for it.
He was reluctant to say so much as a word to any of the other men, knowing the response he’d receive, but this was not the sort of thing that could be ignored.
Speak loud and sharp, he thought, just like you did on the edge of a battle, when you had to get ’em to listen, and listen fast.
“Boys,” he said, getting at least a little of the old muster into his tone, “listen up, now.”
The conversations broke off. Two men were standing on the step of the train car, and when they turned, skull faces studied him.
“I think we best wait for the next train through,” he said. “There’s bad trouble aboard this one. I’m sure of it.”
It was Wallace O’Connell who broke the long silence that followed.
“What in the hell you talking about, Wagner?” he said, and immediately there was a chorus of muttered agreement.
“Something’s wrong with this train,” Arlen said. He stood tall, did his damnedest to hold their eyes.
“You know this for a fact?” O’Connell said.
“I know it.”
“How do you know? And what’s wrong with it?”
“I can’t say what’s wrong with it. But something is. I got a… sense for these things.”
A slow grin crept across O’Connell’s face. “I’ve known some leg-pullers,” he said, “but didn’t figure you for one of them. Don’t got the look.”
“Damn it, man, this ain’t no joke.”
“You got a sense something’s wrong with our train, and you’re telling us it ain’t no joke?”
“Knew a widow back home who was the same way,” spoke up another man from the rear of the circle. He was a slim, wiry old guy with a nose crooked from many a break. Arlen didn’t know his name-hell, he didn’t know most of their names, and that was part of the problem. Aside from Paul there wasn’t a man in the group who’d known Arlen for any longer than this train ride.
“Yeah?” O’Connell said. “Trains talked to her, too?”
“Naw. She had the sense, just like he’s talking about. ’Cept she got her sights from owls and moon reflections and shit like you couldn’t even imagine.”
This new man was grinning wide, and O’Connell was matching it. He said, “She was right all the time, of course?”
“Of course,” the man said, and let out a cackle. “Why, wasn’t but nine year ago she predicted the end of days was upon us. Knew it for a fact. Was going to befall us by that winter. I can’t imagine she was wrong, I just figured I missed being raptured up and that’s how I ended up here with all you sinful sons of bitches.”
The crowd was laughing now, and Arlen felt heat creeping into his face, thoughts of his father and the shame that had chased him from his boyhood home threatening his mind now. Behind him Paul Brickhill was standing still and silent, about the only one in the group who wasn’t at least chuckling. There was a man near Wallace O’Connell whose smile seemed forced, uneasy, but even he was going along with the rest of them.
“I might ask for a tug on whatever’s in that jug of your’n,” O’Connell said. “It seems to be a powerful syrup.”
“It’s not the liquor you’re hearing,” Arlen said. “It’s the truth. Boys, I’m telling you, I seen things in the war just like I am tonight, and every time I did, men died.”
“Men died every damn day in the war,” O’Connell said. The humor had drained from his voice. “And we all seen it-not just you. Some of us didn’t crack straight through from what we seen. Others”-he made a pointed nod at Arlen-“had a mite less fortitude. Now save your stories for somebody fool enough to listen to them. Rest of us don’t need the aggravation. There’s work at the end of this line, and we all need it.”
The men broke up then, drifted back to their own conversations, casting Arlen sidelong stares. Arlen felt a hand on his arm and nearly whirled and threw his fist without looking, shame and fear riding him hard now. It was only Paul, though, tugging him away from the group.
“Arlen, you best ease up.”
“Be damned if I will. I’m telling you-”
“I understand what you’re telling us, but it just doesn’t make sense. Could be you got a touch of fever, or-”
Arlen reached out and grabbed him by his shirt collar. Paul’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t reach for Arlen’s hand, didn’t move at all as Arlen spoke to him in a low, harsh voice.
“You had smoke in your eyes, boy. I don’t give a damn if you couldn’t see it or if none of them could, it was there, and it’s the sign of your death. You known me for a time now, and you ask yourself, how often has Arlen Wagner spoken foolish words to me? How often has he seemed addled? You ask yourself that, and then you ask yourself if you want to die tonight.”
He released the boy’s collar and stepped back. Paul lifted a hand and wiped it over his mouth, staring at Arlen.
“You trust me, Brickhill?” Arlen said.
“You know I do.”
“Then listen to me now. If you don’t ever listen to another man again for the rest of your life, listen to me now. Don’t get back on that train.”
The boy swallowed and looked off into the darkness. “Arlen, I wouldn’t disrespect you, but what you’re saying… there’s no way you could know that.”
“I can see it,” Arlen said. “Don’t know how to explain it, but I can see it.”